Conservatives LOVE Science

Professor Kahan takes issue with the slanted punditry that has latched on to recent analyses of social attitudes toward science. Too often, commentators inflate their claims about the extent to which self-identified “conservatives” have lost faith in scientists and scientific institutions.

Kahan’s Kollage of Kwestionable Klaims

As Professor Kahan points out, a closer look at those findings gives a much different picture. In a nutshell, since 1974 there has been a noticeable decline in the number of conservatives who say they feel “a great deal” of confidence in the leaders of scientific institutions. Some wonks seized on this finding to claim that conservatives were anti-science.

Nertz, says Professor Kahan. The number of conservatives who say they feel “a great deal” of confidence in scientists may have declined, but the total number of conservatives who say they feel either “a great deal” of confidence or “only some” confidence in science has remained fairly steady.

Even more compelling, Kahan notes that these same conservatives rank “science” near the tops of their lists of social institutions they trust. Since 1974, only medicine or the military has outranked science as the number one most trustworthy social institution among conservatives. Other institutions, , such as organized labor, the President, the Supreme Court, education, TV, and, yes, even religious institutions and big corporations, have ranked lower on conservative rankings of trustworthiness.

You heard that right. Overall, conservatives have consistently voiced greater trust in the institution of science than in the institution of religion. Conservatives since 1974 have evinced more trust in science than in big business.

1 Comment

Hi Adam. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I have to run right now to do some errands—so no time to read Kahan’s argument. A colleague of mine in Great Britain has been looking at this subject with regard to conservative Republicans. While conservatives might value science as a whole, and particularly the hard sciences, as noble enterprises, Several things suggest to us that these same people despise the social sciences and place little confidence or value in them. Indeed, in our field, one member of Congress is out to slit our research project throats right now: